Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7752 – What’s New and How to Enable Built‑in Sysmon
If you’re riding the Beta Channel, this build finally gives you native Sysmon support and a handful of Explorer polish. In this article I’ll walk through turning on Sysmon without tripping over an old install, point out the locale tweak for Voice Access, and flag the OneDrive/Dropbox freeze fix that saved me a weekend.
Enabling the Built‑in Sysmon
Microsoft finally bundled Sysmon as an optional feature. It’s still off by default because most home users don’t need kernel‑level event logging, but security geeks will love it. Here’s why you might want to enable it: Sysmon writes detailed process creation, network connection, and file‑change events to the Windows Event Log, which many EDR tools consume out of the box.
Step‑by‑step
Open Settings → System → Optional features → More Windows features. Scroll until you see “Sysmon” and check it.
If you prefer the command line, run:
Dism /Online /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:Sysmon
After the feature is enabled, finish the install with:
sysmon -i
The ‑i switch registers Sysmon with a default configuration that logs everything. You’ll probably want to swap in your own XML filter file later – just drop it into %ProgramFiles%\Sysmon\ and run sysmon -c <yourfile>.xml.
A quick heads‑up: If you previously installed the Sysinternals version, uninstall it first (msiexec /x sysmon) or you’ll get a cryptic “feature already present” error. I ran into that after testing the old binary for a week; the installer refused to start and left my logs half‑filled with duplicate events.
Voice Access Gets Dutch Support
The new locale addition is a modest but welcome change for anyone who uses voice commands in the Netherlands. It means you can now say “Open Verkenner” and have Explorer launch without fiddling with language packs. If you’re an accessibility enthusiast, toggle it on under Settings → Accessibility → Voice Access and select Dutch.
File Explorer Tweaks
Explorers are notorious for clinging to old bugs. Build 26220.7752 fixes three annoyances that I’ve seen creep up in my own setups:
- Keyboard navigation now respects the standard arrow‑key flow even when you have a custom view applied.
- Renaming a folder with a name containing illegal characters no longer silently reverts to the original name.
- The “Add to favorites” pin shows its icon and tooltip again – something that broke after a recent theme change on my machine.
If you’re still seeing stale icons, clear the thumbnail cache (ie4uinit.exe -show) and restart Explorer.
OneDrive/Dropbox Freeze Fix
A handful of users reported apps freezing when they accessed files stored in cloud sync folders. The latest build resolves the deadlock by improving how the file‑system filter driver interacts with third‑party sync services. If you’ve been dealing with random freezes, give this update a spin and you should see smoother behavior.
For more information, checked out the official announcement below:
Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7752 (Beta Channel)
Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7752 (KB5074177) to the Beta Channel.
Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7752 (Beta Channel)
